I remember how fun and mildly chalenging were tbc hcs and scary raids were and then see what a joke are current hcs and raids are loot pinatas....
On top of that blizz is blaming me for "consuming" content too fast.
Makes me ill tbh;
I maybe was that big of a noob in tbc, but the content seemed to last for QUITE A WHILE back then.
If you make your content accesible to the illiterals - most people will start complaining of lack of content, who would have guessed?
Oh and what fun it is to run a raid in lfr, then normal, then hc...if the loot was different atleast in hc i guess it would be ok. But having 3 different scaled versions of each item devalues loot.
Many of you dont know this, but "back in the day" you didnt loot an epic every 5 sec, purple loot had some value other than vendor value attached to it.
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I think they're fixing that in MOP with optional but real slow grind of valor points over the cap. You can perceive it as a grind. However, keep in mind that Mists of Pandaria also adds scenarios, pet battles, challenge modes and plenty of daily quests to do at level 90, which will definitely help in providing more content to do. And more importantly, do whatever you want to do. |
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The 4.3 heroic dungeons and Dragon Soul when the patch was released are a good measure to get an impression on how the content will look difficulty wise.
And 97% of the Internet know that 99% of statistics are made up on the spot :-) Is any chances to see Raids that would bring back people to raid them? And i simply put off Lfr. LFR is not going away, if that's what you're asking for, it's actually useful for players that can't be part of a raiding guild (or don't want, for whatever reason) to experience the content. And new raid content will be appealing to raiders, surely. Will it be appealing to your friends/guildmates? Well, that's really up to them. There's a number of (personal) factors that no amount of raid content will change. |
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Not really. Nerfing content doesn't help the same spectrum of players. Players that are struggling on, let's say, Heroic Hagara, will eventually give up if they can't progress further. The only question in that case is, how long before they stop? Might be a month, or six, but if they can't progress, they'll stop. That's the crowd that those nerfs are aimed at. Moving forward, the dev team is thinking about using a similar system as the one currently in place for Dragon Soul. A single debuff on monsters for a raid tier that's been out for several months.
I'm not taking it as an attack, no worries. I understand you're trying to express yourself. Honestly, I'm unsure what's the message you're trying to give, though. You become bored of the content because it's not hard enough for you? (seeing that you've progressed nicely on Heroic DS). If that's the case, I can tell you that the devs are hard at work to roll patches faster than we've done in the past. I also have the feeling (though I'm probably wrong) that some players are underestimating the true value of challenge modes (not necessarily your case). In those modes you're fighting against the clock, so that will always be challenging (you can always try to do it faster). |
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But the issue is not exactly the lack of content, but the increasingly lower difficulty of it. I'm pretty sure at least several hardcore guilds kinda agreed that Sinestra was as difficulty as HC LK, and Ragnaros was harder, so I wouldn't call that an "increasingly lower difficulty". You mention 10% of all raid guilds have downed Heroic Madness. There's no reasonable argument to call that a "very large" number.
If that's how you want to play the game, sure. If it's not, but someone else wants to, how does it affect you? How exactly does what others do in this game impact you? LFR should be, the place for the easy kills, and it is. So, basically, you're saying that rather than providing an ongoing challenge that you can slowly overcome (or rapidly, depending on your skill), the devs should rather focus on preventing 90% of the players from seeing a difficulty mode. That's one of the best ways I can think of to frustrate a lot of people.
This is an argument I've seen thrown around plenty of times. Yet, Wrath of the Lich King, which seems to be considered by many hardcore players as the easiest expansion ever, had some of the highest participation rates in dungeons and raids we've ever seen. And, ironically enough, also had some of the hardest encounters to date (I remember the threads and headaches that some hardcore guilds were having at the time with Lich King and Putricide Heroic, as well as Yogg-Saron +0, Sarth 3D, just to name a few). |
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LFR was meant for players that can't participate in raiding guilds either because they don't have the chunks of time required for that, or don't enjoy (for whatever reason) being part of those guilds. Let's not mix that with "experiencing the content". Experiencing the content doesn't mean getting a tourist visit around the place. I was happy when Blizzard announced LFR, because people finally could be able to experience the content without getting loot they clearly don't deserve. If they can clear LFR they do. They're already getting lower ilvl gear compared to normal and Heroic.
Feel free to go and show us how you and your guildmates kill Spine Heroic with your eyes closed, please :-) You wouldn't be able to. Even if the content is easy for you at a given point, it was challenging before, and it's just natural that it becomes even easier over time once you've mastered it. But there are players that are still progressing through Dragon Soul and, believe it or not, are actually being challenged by the content in its current form. |
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1. Why are you replacing content instead of adding content? 1. No content is being replaced. Giving players a mean to gear up through alternate means to get up to speed is something we've been doing since the TBC days. If you want to go and finish Firelands, you can go and do it (and completing Glory of the Firelands Raider is no easy task, even if it doesn't require you to kill Heroic Ragnaros). 2. You mention you would be "ashamed" if someone sees you killed Spine Heroic at the 25% nerf. First, why do you care what some random person on the internet thinks about you? I'd rather put at the front my own enjoyment. And if, for one reason or another, I can't kill Spine before the 25% debuff, well, big deal (as long as I'm having fun). 3. I've explained that here. 4. Actually, the developers agree that Spine is harder than Madness in most aspects. In theory, the concept of the encounter was great, but in practice it's kind of just a tentacle fight. They're trying to deliver an awesome encounter with the Sha of Fear at the Terrace of Endless Spring. As for the time itself, it's not different than how long other end-of-expansion bosses have been available for. Again, dishing indirectly on disabled people isn't cool. I'm not dishing on disabled people (that'd be quite inappropriate), and I believe you're reading too much into the piece you've quoted. If you've felt offended, my sincere apologies. At no point I've meant to be offensive to anyone.
I don't need to have faith in the playerbase because they've shown me time and time again that they can do amazing things. And if I had the feeling the people posting here are violent trolls I wouldn't bother posting. I can assure you that. 8 months is not how long content lasts. Content lasts approximately 5 months, i assure you. Noone wants to play in the same 8 boss nerfed raid instance for more than 5 months, And since you don't expect us to run through BWD or BOT anymore, the content lasts even less. Nobody goes BWD or BOT to gear up anymore. Barely anyone goes FL to gear up anymore. The way you are designing content to last is atrocious! But the fact is that there's content to be run if you've not killed Madness Heroic. If you're voluntarily stopping because of whatever reason, there isn't much I can do to help fight that feeling. As I've said, the dev team is hard at work trying to put out patches faster, but that doesn't fix current issues. It's a situation that's always happened at the end of expansions so far.
It is for you, sure. You can't pretend it is the same for other players. There'll surely be players that will get immense fun of pet battles, and there are players out there enjoying the LFR system.
Why not? At some point you just need to move on. By that reasoning, we could go extreme and ask, well, why should players who just buy a new expansion have better gear than those that completed Thunderfury in Molten Core 7 years ago? I'd like to ask, There's something about "experiencing the content" that doesn't feel right. The idea behind the different difficulties is not to let people that want a challenge to go straight to Heroic and have everyone else chilling in Normal (or LFR). The reason there's normal and Heroic is as simple as the fact the playerbase skills are hugely different between the most hardcore players and new fresh raiders. By having normal and Heroic you can progress through the raid tier until you get to that point where you actually start struggling. For you that might be Heroic Blackhorn, for another player, it might be normal Spine. As for the other points, if players want to experience lower tiers, they can do at any point. That then what should be the very hardest boss of the expasion, Heroic Madness, is killed by 10%+ of all guilds, is just to much. It should be 5%, or even less. Just like Naxx was back in Vanilla, and HC Lich King during WotLK. Don't forget, the whole deal with the end boss on hardmode is that beyond that you can not progress, and not being able to progress for many months makes the game a bore So, 5% of the players (in your opinion) should be able to kill the last end boss on Heroic, yet, at the same time, you also say that not being able to progress for many months make the game boring. Do you realize that that's basically what would happen to that 95% of players when, eventually, get to the end boss?
Not at all. And in fact, HC LK was defeated without the debuff not much longer after the initial kill. If memory serves me right, by Paragon.
There's too much too answer there (and some things I can't answer) but it's a very useful post, thanks for putting the time into writing it. Yes, sadly this thread was turned in to a Q&A session and people were venting out their frustration on Draztal. I'm more than happy to provide answers where I can. Some things can only be answered by the devs though, but we also take care of getting those questions their way so we can get the answers you asked for (even if at times they're not what you'd like to read). EDIT: Corrected the name of the guild that killed LK HC at 0%. |
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The artificial 3 tiered approach to raiding was already made to let everyone have a go at their respective tier (and to cut production costs of having to cater for 3 different dungeons for the same purpose). Why blend it further and force the way of thinking in that many more should do HC? As I said before, people stop playing when they can't progress, with the exception of the truly hardcore and dedicated raiders, that will keep pushing until the brick wall has been destroyed. So, the best guilds out there will get first to the end and finish it, but a progressive debuff system also allows everyone a chance at getting through the content at the pace they can (putting a side example, if someone likes football, would that person enjoy it if he were allowed to play only at the same level of performance that Rooney, Ronaldo, Messi, etc do?, probably not, however he'd surely have plenty of fun playing with his local team, or just with his friends, this is kind of the same, not everyone can perform at the absolute maximum level). Keep in mind that there're plenty of players that love raiding and start on normal hoping to eventually get to Heroic and keep progressing. Since we've already said that these players will stop playing when they get stuck, the developers don't feel it's right to tell them that they should just be happy to have made it that far and stay in the LFR, or normal just because they get to see the content. We've got from world first guilds that can pull amazing strategies to players that don't have the time for more than LFR with everyone else in between them. That people needs something to keep them willing to progress. |
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Someone else getting the same piece of gear you have hardly nullifies your work. It really makes as much sense as feeling offended because other players are getting to level 85 after you did, and with heirlooms, and with guildies helping that person reach level 85 (see where I'm going?). The important question (at least in my opinion) should be, did you have fun working to get that piece of gear? If that's a yes, it'd expect then that the experience getting there was worth it :-) |
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For the most hardcore raiders, yeah, sure it was fun. For the players that were somewhere behind (either Tier 5 or Tier 6 content, heck, even at Brutallus), things weren't exactly bright. I still remember the many threads we were seeing back then about Kael'thas and Lady Vashj breaking guilds...
I understand this is the reasoning from the perspective of hardcore players, but there're many more players that for whatever reason don't really have the same level of skill. It doesn't take long for those players to go from fun to the frustration of realizing that, at their current skill level, they're facing an impossible challenge.
To many other players, knowing that the boss is now 5% weaker, is compelling because it means they can have an easier time on things that were blocking them and will start progressing on the encounter.
Achievements aren't being removed from heroics, so that argument is rather moot. But if you really think that John Doe cares about what you did in a video game, you should really think again. Of course it means something to you, just don't pretend it means something for everyone, because that's not the case even in-game.
There's a massive difference between having an appropriate challenge, hitting a brick wall, and steamrolling everything. If there's absolutly no challenge on any of the bosses, that would be as boring as hitting a raid full of Heroic Ragnaros for the players that don't have the skill to perform at that level. There're players that, very probably, could take on even harder incarnations of the bosses we've all seen. There're players that need a 5/10% debuff to have an adequate challenge, and there're players as well that even with the 30% debuff still struggle to advance. And all of them are progressing at their own pace.
Can you prove that with data?. For some reason it's relatively common to have this perception that, because something is easier than before, everyone is getting it, and it's not true. The cold reality is that there're many raiding guilds that won't even see Spine Heroic before Mists of Pandaria is released (the skill difference between those guilds and the Top 200 in the world is THAT big).
I know for many hardcore players, changing groups is not only acceptable, but pretty much mandatory. "If your current guild can't clear this, leave that sorry lot behind and aim for the sky". The reality is that many enjoy raiding with their friends and they'd rather stay there than join a guild that has Madness Heroic on farm status since Day 1, even if they can.
That's a very interesting thought, thanks for sharing it.
Although Jito has already responded to this (here), I'll add that Challenge mode is actually tuned harder than Heroic, and in some cases there might be even extra pulls or mechanics that aren't present on Heroic.
I think we should accept that guilds pushing for world firsts will do anything in their hands to get an edge. And it doesn't sound fair to punish the rest of the playerbase, preventing them from improving the gear of their characters, just because some guilds might get and edge on their race to world first. |
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Which part of the text you've quoted looks incomprehensible to you? |
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Some players do need that help to progress on certain encounters. It's not necessarily a must, but it's true that there're players out there that wouldn't be able to kill a certain boss before the debuff reaches a certain percentage (if you kill a boss just with 5%, then you were pretty close already, by all means). The <must> part terrifies me. In terms of player satisfaction your keyword is "progression", my keyword is "challenge". Sorry, seems we're worlds apart :( Both of them are the same. Progression brings a new challenge to overcome (unless you're at the end of the road). I'd say many players raid for the challenge and the experience, because they expect to overcome it eventually. That's were the line between progression and challenge might become distorted, as you start going through the different levels of skill our players have. While to you a boss that is now 20% weaker than it was back then might look as an absolute non-challenge, the truth is that is still challenging for the players that are now progressing on it. So, the "challenge" is still there, and that's why, in that sense, for those players the debuff is almost a "must". If it wasn't for it, they wouldn't have anything else to do after defeating what's available to their own level of skill.
If you can put your thoughts in a clear and concise manner (which you clearly do), then it's not insignificant. We may agree or disagree, but that's it.
It's as much of an assumption as it is saying that many hardcore raiders find super difficult bosses compelling. I mean, it's just my way of trying to put into words that there's a segment of players that like the fact that, eventually, that boss they can't even think of killing right now, will be weaker enough to consider attempting it, and perhaps, succeeding at overcoming it. I'd be crazy to not say that there're many hardcore raiders that find compelling fighting bosses that are absolutely insane for a huge majority of players. |
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So that those players can artificially feel superior to them? Isn't enough the fact that they defeated the boss without the debuff prove they're already better than them?
This is a videogame, not a job. So it's pretty hard to relate that example to this environment, honestly.
This was happening back on the TBC days (I'll use it since it's been mentioned several times as the ideal "moment" of hardcore raiding). At some point through the BT/Hyjal/SWP cycle, in some realms guilds just started canibalizing each other, as the rest of the players just didn't have the gear, or the progression required to join them. Some guilds broke trying to defeat Brutallus, but I've always wondered how many players trying to enter those guilds, were rejected solely on the gear they had, rather than the actual skill they had, just because they were still playing catch-up to the players that had progressed more than them. |
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Draztal, don't you think it's a bit of a concern to sort of set the barrier really low in some things, however? I mean, I totally get the whole being accessible (I hate the word though XD) and as you can tell from my raid history I am one of those that come from a 'I used to raid but got tired of the schedules"-people for which LFR is excellent, and to a lesser degree normal mode. No, I don't think there's any concern on setting the barrier too low. I mean, anyone can play basketball, yet I know that the only thing in common I have with Michael Jordan when it comes to basketball skills is that he's also a human being. Gaming has constantly been evolving, and it'll continue to do so for as long as this industry keeps moving. Difficulty is there, but the industry is probably moving away from punishing the players for things that, in the past, were seen as normal. Heck, back in the days even "casual" games (such as Super Mario) were punishing enough that, if you lost all your lifes (basically, the attempts at finishing the game), you had to start from scratch back in World 1-1. |
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Now - what can we do for Draztal. Oh yeah lets nerf the hight of the hoop and the lenght of the field to Draztal also can get the above achievements - after all Jordan wont mind - he got them first and had fun doing them ;-) The proper equivalent to your comparison would be that, for Jordan's despair, I'd have fun playing with my friends and perhaps even winning local tournaments (thanks to them, not me, certainly). But, anyways, you're comparing the professional aspect of something anyone can do (play basketball) with a videogame. The differences in that regard, are, obviously, too big to even consider it a fair ground. Anyways, let's leave that example up there, would be a shame if the thread went off-topic now when there're so many interesting posts going around. |
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My question still stands: We have 3 modes of the very same raid, 2 of these are easily accessible by the vast majority. Why is it necessary to ruin the third mode for the ones who enjoy it? It's not about elitism, it's about providing a satisfying and enjoyable experience for the hardcore players too. The "why should we ruin this for the hardcore" bit has been explained several posts ago (and in multiple ocasions). However, there's something this hardcore/casual attitude that hasn't been tackled at length on this thread. (Note: this is a bit of a rant, just my personal, and probably crazy, opinion.) Perhaps we should find a definition of what's a "hardcore" and a "casual" player (Hint: You'll probably have an easier time predicting the lottery numbers) that the community can agree on. It's an incredible tricky question. If we go by the "classic definition" (is there even one?) of the term, a hardcore player would be any person deeply interested in a game, usually with a very high level of play and understanding, and capable of devoting plenty of time to it. These days, I've seen it all, from players playing 5 hours a day, 5 days a week, claiming they're casual, to players playing 3 hours a day, 2 days a week, claiming they're hardcore. It obviously can't be that way for everyone. (And truth be told, in most cases I've seen the "casual" or "hardcore" word attached depending on which one would favour the argument that was being presented). If we go by this sort of "classic definition", then it's very clear who's "hardcore" and who's not. And some people will be very close to that definition, but not close enough. Either because you can't devote enough time (which is completely fine), or because your group doesn't have that level of skill (which, again, is completely fine too). If we go by that "classic definition" of the term, then we could assume that hardcore players completed the raid relatively quick after the initial Heroic Madness kill and were not affected at all by the debuff. So, to me, the real question would be "where do we stop considering players hardcore"? But that's a debate that would probably never end... |
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The point was that a lot of people(and thats just my claim) that perhaps dont fit the classic definition of hardcore(since they cant devote a million hours in a few weeks) feel that they were effectively(dont start the "turn the Aspect-buff off" discusion again please - it has been covered) robbed of the opportunity to complete the unnerfed content! My answer to that group is that they can turn the debuff off. The answer to that is that they can't because of the realm race (or whichever), but in that case, at least to me, it sounds like the interest of that group doesn't lie on the challenge itself, as much as on finishing ahead of others (which is probably just as fun for some people). As long as the possibility to turn off the debuff exists, noone is being "robbed" of anything. The challenge is still there, if you and your guildmates want to do it. |
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Post limit increased.
Please, please, keep it as civil as you've done for the most of this thread. There's plenty of useful and interesting discussions going on here and it'd be a shame to have the thread derailed at this point. |
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If someone, months later, can clear the content in half the time the original group did, then it probably is a group that doesn't need the debuff to play at that level anyways. A group that needs the 20% debuff to progress through Heroic Dragon Soul is not going to realistically clear it in half the time or half the effort than others did. It's really allowing them to tackle the content, not breeze through it. Wether or not players haven't cleared Dragon Soul at this point is slightly irrelevant Ujellibrah, I'm saying this because when the nerfs started most had only just returned from Christmas holidays.., and considering it's only an 8 boss tier with a very limited loot table, 1 - 1½ month is next to no time for a proper gearing process in terms of a raid throughout put (Natural nerf through gearing to overcome a challenging boss) This is actually useful feedback (which you and others have mentioned on this thread) for the developers, thanks.
Oh, please, not at all. I loved TBC and I was very deep into raiding back then. I've actually mentioned what I think a hardcore player would be here.
So, you had the chance to progress further (and actually get gear that would have helped you overcoming Vashj and Kael'thas) but you decided that, for whatever reason, you didn't belong in there, despite the removal of the attunements. That kind of self-imposed restriction is fine, sure, but I can't feel much empathy to an argument that basically says "we couldn't progress, and when you gave us the chance to do something different and progress, we still refused to take it."
The debuff only makes things easier, it doesn't get rid of any mechanics, and you can't ignore them either.
Players improve every time, some will improve more than others, but there's always something to learn when you're progressing through encounters.
It's a roadblock for the guilds stuck on that boss (others may be stuck on Yor'sahj, and others may be stuck on Blackhorn, you probably get the point).
It might be meaningless to you, but there're players progressing through Normal even these days, for whatever their reason is. If your guild is used to raiding in Heroic, that's great, but don't write off Normal as something that noone does other than to unlock Heroic, because, honestly, it's not true. There are players that do find a challenge in that difficulty, and actually expect at some point to move on and tackle Heroic, just as other guilds are doing now.
Honest question, do you realistically think your guild, you, and your friends, would have kept up with 10 months of straight bashing your head against Ragnaros? 10 months, 40 weeks of knowing that there's nothing new in your raid than this one boss you're seeing where you're making almost very little weekly progress. Time is a big factor here. There's a difference on keeping the willingness to tackle a challenge for 2 weeks straight until you see it fall, with keeping that same willingness during 10 months. |
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I said it several pages ago, but I'll repeat. Anything you can put in a concise manner, and without being demeaning to others, it's always useful (regardless of whetther the developers agree or not with that feedback). So yes, of course it's valid feedback! |
